


Fake it 'til you make it

by SonyB89



Series: Characters of Pedro Pascal [3]
Category: Triple Frontier (2019)
Genre: Army buddies, F/M, Frankie deserves love, Friends to Lovers, Male-Female Friendship, Pedro Pascal Characters, Rating May Change, Romantic Friendship, Secret Crush, Slow Burn, single dad frankie
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 14:34:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29047731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonyB89/pseuds/SonyB89
Summary: Emily Dubois had two shitty weeks  and it just keeps getting worse and worse.After he apartment burned down, she moved in with her friend Frankie Morales and his daughter Marisol. But the universe keeps throwing problems her way.
Relationships: Francisco "Catfish" Morales/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Characters of Pedro Pascal [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2121489
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	Fake it 'til you make it

**Fake it ’til you make it**

Faulty wiring sucked.   
But if Emilys bad luck had ended there, she could have lived with that.  
Lately though, it seemed like the universe did everything in it’s power to make her absolutely miserable.

The talk she’d just had with the department head at her university had been the last straw.  
  
Fishing out her smartphone from her pocket, trying to hold back tears, she texted Frankie:

_I’ll meet you guys at the pub. Won’t make it home in time._

The fact that she had to call Francisco Morales’ house her “home” right now was due to catastrophe number one from two weeks ago – faulty wiring in her already shitty apartment.  
Something inside the walls of the kitchen in her crappy flat had caught fire, making her and her cat Pebble homeless overnight.

Frankie had offered her his guestroom and refused to accept any rent.

Helping him out with his four year old daughter Marisol was the only payment he accepted.  
At first she had hesitated.

Temporarily moving in with the single father one had harboured a secret crush on for the last one and a half years did sound dangerous – but in the end, there had been no other choice.

And on top of that, she loved Marisol dearly. So she had accepted.

Now, two weeks later, she stumbled into one of the ground floor bathrooms at the university, let her leather bag sink to the floor and grasped the edges of the marble sink, utterly exhausted and on the verge of a breakdown.  
Looking in the mirror, her crystal blue eyes swam with tears.

One would think that she was used to her peculiar hair colour by now, after living with it for more than thirty years.

Due to a rare pigment defect, her hair had never held any colour and she had been born with grey strands. Once old enough, she had coloured her hair with a creamy tone to give it a shine and a sparkle.   
Her mother had always teased her – as if the stars had decided to give her a special hair colour.

Her long braid was starting to come undone, so she freed and braided her white-grey hair anew. What was she supposed to do now?  
She dreaded the next few days and she had to come up with a plan.

Her only hope now were the four men she called her friends, waiting for her at a pub across town.

Between her and an Ex-Special Ops team, there might just be enough brain cells in one place to come up with a solution.

With one last deep breath and a final look in the mirror, she shouldered her bag again and left.

Emily Dubois was officially on a mission – not getting kicked out of the United States of America.

* * *

She was the last to arrive. It had started to rain, but the taxi had dropped her at the front of the cozy pub, so she only had to shake a bit of water off her.

William, Benny, Santiago and Frankie were sitting at one of the tables in the back, four beers already being shared between them.  
Will was the first to notice her come in and waved.

Emily dragged herself over to the table but didn’t take a seat yet.  
She had finally reached her safe space and could finally unload. Her bag dropped from her shoulders as she started to shiver a little.

“I..”, she stuttered, “I think I need a hug.”  
  
That was all she could utter before the tears she had held back all day finally spilled.  
  
Santiago sat on the bench right in front of her and didn’t lose time to stand up and press Emily to his muscular chest.   
She clung to him like he was a lifeline.   
He wrapped her in his arms, gently cupping her head and rubbing her back, whispering calming words into her ear that she didn’t pay attention to.

For now she just needed a minute to let go of all the stress and the colossal clusterfuck of a day she’d had.  
When he felt that she had calmed down a little, Santiago placed a kiss on her forehead and urged William to scoot over on the bench, so she could sit between the two of them.

“Sorry, guys”, she mumbled, wiping her face. “Rough day. Shitty day, actually.”  
William draped his arm over her shoulder and pulled her closer.  
  
“You can tell us about it in a minute. Now, what does the lady need? Anything you want is on us.”

“Something with an unhealthy amount of sugar in it to drink”, she said.  
“And a bacon cheeseburger.”

“Oh good lord. This must really be serious”, Benny said. “A bacon cheeseburger?”

“Shut up, Benny”, she chuckled and blew her nose into a napkin.

“I’ll get it”, he said, saluting and walking off to the bar.

Frankie had not said a word yet.   
Emily could feel his gaze on her, curiosity and concern fighting a furious battle in his head.  
  
When Benny returned with a fizzy drink that had a swimming lime wench in it, she started to talk.

“I think I might have to leave the country.”

Will and Santi coughed up their beer, cursing, while Benny and Frankie exchanged confused looks.

“Leave the country? Like, where too?”

She started to explain.  
“I have some serious bureaucracy shit to deal with. My apartment burned down, so legally I don’t have a current address right now. And as I am a European citizen, it’s harder for me to get a new place.”

All her mail was being forwarded to Frankies place at the moment, but that was not the issue, apparently. She continued.

“My work visa is only valid as long as I am employed at the university. And my contract with the university is being renewed every single year. Some crap about not being able to give non-US residents contracts that run longer than two years?”

She angrily munched on her fries, only now realising how hungry she was.   
The salt and sugar in her bloodstream definitely helped now, turning her sadness into anger and frustration.

“The head of my department told me today that as long as I don’t have a new official place to live, they can’t renew my contract. And if they don’t renew my contract, my work visa will be pulled and I’ll be forced to leave the US. And getting a new visa would take ages. So if I can’t think about a way to stay in the country legally or become a US citizen withing the next two weeks or so, I’ll get sent home…”

The men knew that there was nothing for Emily waiting for her back “home” in Europe.   
She had come to the US six years ago to start a new life and finish her doctorate and had secured a job at the university that she loved.

“Well, this is definitely a bacon cheeseburger problem”, Benny admitted.

“And a tequila problem”, Santi said. “I’ll get shots.”

“Why are they not satisfied with you putting down Frankies address as yours?”, Will wanted to know.

Emily shrugged, swallowing her current bite.

“Because the place is not registered to me, doesn’t have my name on it or something? Like I told you, a big pile of bureaucracy shit.”

All of a sudden, Frankie stood up, urgently pushed Benny out of the booth and said: “I’ll be right back.”

While he exited the pub he kept looking at his watch and didn’t mind that it was pissing outside.

“Where’d he go?”, Santiago asked, returning with five shots of tequila that almost spilled all over the table, sitting down next to Benny.

“No idea”, he mumbled.

Shots gone, cheeseburger eaten, the four of them sat at the table, pushing ideas back and forth.  
But everything they came up with was either impossible or a solution that would not get them any results in time.

When Frankie returned to the pub about twenty minutes later he was drenched to the bone but he didn’t seem fazed at all. His right hand was in his pocket, his left hand plucked his baseball cap off his had so he could run it through his hair.

“Have a solution yet?”, he asked.

Head were shaken all around.

“Well I… I kind of thought of something…”, he said, now looking directly at Emily.

“Em, do you trust me?”

She blinked, turning her body towards him in surprise.

  
He sounded so serious, so earnest and a little nervous too.  
  


“Yes? Of course I do”, she said.

Without hesitation, Frankie threw his cap at Santi, picked up Emilys hand and went down on one knee right in the middle of the crowded pub.

“Then marry me.”

For the second time that night Will almost choked on his beer.

Suddenly all the eyes of the patrons in the club were on them.  
Frankie pulled out a delicate golden ring from his right pocket.

On top of it, instead of a stone, sat a rose made out of a white pearl and the edges of the petals were decorated with fine gold.

“Fish… what are you doing?”, Santiago asked.

"And where'd you get a fucking engagement ring?", Benny chuckled

“I’m asking Emily to marry me so she can stay with us. And thrift store around the corner”, he said, his gaze never leaving hers. She had turned red as a tomato, her heart running a marathon.

“Em, you mean more to me, _to us_ , than you will ever know. You are the kindest soul I know. I suspect my own daughter loves you more than she loves me. And you’ve done so much for all of us. I know this is not the most romantic proposal and this is not how marriage normally works – but I want you to stay.”

“Frankie…”

“If you say yes, you can stay.”

Tears were once again swimming in her eyes as she saw how much love and friendship his gaze held.   
His hand was shaking, in fact his whole body was shaking due to the cold, but he didn’t let go. And he was dead serious.

“Isn’t that… kind of illegal?”

Frankie shook his head.   
“We wouldn't be pretending to love each other, would we? I care about you, you care about me. There are thousands of marriages out there were people can’t even stand each other. God knows I don’t have a good track record with women anyway. This way, I get to marry my best friend.”

“Fish, I don’t think this is the best ide-“

“Yes.”

Bennys protest and their arguments were toned out by the cheer and claps of the patrons in the pub as Frankie put the ring on Emilys finger and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

Now with one problem almost solved, she had to deal with hundreds of others.

The most pressing one: Marrying the man she loved, when he didn’t even know it.


End file.
